Blogs and Commentary

Christie Rampone's Short, Sweet Lacrosse Career

As if you needed another reason to root for Team USA in
Sunday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in the final versus
Japan on Sunday: Defender and team captain Christie Rampone
was a laxer in college! Well, sort of. She played two games
for Monmouth, where she was captain of both the basketball team and
the soccer team. (She’s still the all-time leading scorer for
the Hawks’ soccer program.) This New
York Daily News profile of Rampone mentioned that she played
soccer and lacrosse to stay in shape, so I dug further.

The Monmouth all-time
lacrosse roster reports that she was a player during her senior
year in 1997 (under her maiden name, Christie Pearce), and her official bio
mentions that she played two games of lacrosse in college. Rampone
is a self-described “sports nut” who made a point of
trying a lot of different things. A quote from the NYDN piece:
“"I was outside all the time. I played field hockey,
basketball, soccer and ran a little track. I never focused on one
sport. That's been great for me getting to this level because I
never had any burn out.”

And now she’s a three-time Olympian who’s going for
her second World Cup title. (Rampone was a very young reserve
player on the legendary 1999 team that beat China in the
best-attended, most-watched women’s sporting event of all
time.) Rampone is a great example of why it’s important to
play more than one sport: it makes you better at all of them, and
prevents lax/soccer/whatever overload.

As for those two NCAA lacrosse games, I got in touch with
Rampone’s agent Rob Raju, and he said this via e-mail:
“In college she was just so athletic that the lacrosse coach
asked her to come play and help the team. So she jumped right in
having never played before.”

Raju added: “Christie is currently the oldest player on the
USWNT and is still the fastest. She ran a 4.77 4 yd dash time this
year. She also finished #1 out of 20 in the team fit testing. The
average age of the team is 25 and Christie is 36 years old. What
makes this even more amazing is that she has had two children, torn
her ACL and suffers from Lymes Disease.”

So, in conclusion, Rampone is an athletic freak, and lacrosse is
proud to claim her as one of our own. Go laxers, go multi-sport
athletes, go Christie, and GO TEAM USA!